We met with Lena Marquise, performance artist and creator of all things erotic to discuss porn production and why she makes porn. She reveals what sexuality means to her and why she wants the eroticism she creates to be more that just about arousal and entertainment, but the psychology of both as well.
In the past I have worked on various porn projects and although my work is not always explicitly pornographic, there is nothing I do that doesn’t have some erotic focus. Recently I was working with a company making erotic films, but left because I felt it was moving too much towards the mainstream purely for revenue, and that’s not what I want. I want to express myself and explore various elements of sexuality in an entertaining fashion. There is an intellectual side to porn.
I find most porn incredibly boring and don’t typically watch it. So I’d say I’m making porn for myself, as a way to vent my own, and other people’s, frustrations. Inspiration for my work comes from my own experiences and/or interactions I’ve had with others. I am working on bringing back more artistic erotica as well as exploring the intellectual aspect of human sexuality, gender and social bias.
Sexuality for me exists in the mind as something that triggers the brain to create arousal. Although I believe sexuality exists, I think it coexists with things people choose to think about first: penetration, pain, tension. Sexuality in its raw form is just mindless arousal.
But arousal can be stimulated by something very simple that isn’t necessarily what society might consider sexual. For example, imagine a video of a cucumber repeatedly entering a cup full of vanilla pudding. For one person the images might connote a delicious snack and for another, a memory of getting fisted by someone wearing a green nurse’s glove. Either way, viewers are aroused. In fact, I don’t think that vaginal intercourse is necessarily sexual. I mean if you spoke about it in more medical terms it’s two mucous membranes rubbing against each other in a place that happens to have a particular type of sensitive nerve endings that make it intense. This is what interests me: psychosexuality. I make people think what is it about being dominated or force fed, or whatever their fetish or desire they have, that they find arousing.
In my film work I want to open people’s sexuality in a positive way. I’m not trying to push people to take themselves to dark mental places that make you question the very goodness of humanity. My films focus on arousal of the viewer, and perhaps open internal questions about how they work. In this way, I think porn should exist to give people the option to explore themselves and their sexuality.
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